Author: Michael Schröpl
Description: An overview about all changes within the corresponding mod_gzip versions
Keywords: Apache, compression, gzip, mod_gzip, versions

# Version history and change log for mod_gzip

## New in version 1.3.26.1a

- bug fix: In previous versions `mod_gzip` had a problem handling POST requests containing a body longer than 4 rsp. 8 kByte.
  Now `mod_gzip` declines to handle these requests, so that their content will be served in uncompressed form.
- bug fix: In previous versions `mod_gzip` had a problem handling HTTP headers longer than 4 kB (e. g. when using very long contents for HTTP cookies). This has been fixed.
- Reduction of the amount of `Vary:` HTTP headers being generated since version 1.3.19.2a, re-improving the cacheability of uncompressed content by proxy caches.
- Additionally sending a `Vary: *` HTTP header when a `mod_gzip_min_http` directive has been used, to indicate a type of negotiation other than for HTTP header names
- New directive: `mod_gzip_update_static`.
- The ancient directives
  - `mod_gzip_add_vinfo`,
  - `mod_gzip_do_static_files`,
  - `mod_gzip_do_cgi`,
  - `mod_gzip_post_on` and
  - `mod_gzip_verbose_debug`
  from earlier `mod_gzip` releases that weren't supported for some time now have now been completely removed from the program source.
  This may cause configurations still containing these ineffective directives to no longer load now with the new version; simply remove these old directives, as they didn't have any effect at all even in version 1.3.19.1a.
- Patch for the Netware platform: Adaption of some message texts whose wording covered only Win32 (supplied by Günther Knauf).

## New in version 1.3.19.2a

- Sending the `Vary:` HTTP header to mark the output as negotiation result for proxy servers.
- Splitting the source code into three files:
  - `mod_gzip.c`: module functions and embedding into the Apache server
  - `mod_gzip_compress.c`: the gzip compression function by Kevin Kiley
  - `mod_gzip_debug.c`: pure diagnostic output functions (required only if the variable `MOD_GZIP_DEBUG1` has been defined in the preprocessor).
- bug fix: If the result of a compression is larger than the original file then `mod_gzip` forgot to remove the created temporary file from its work directory. During time a lot of files gathered there (which by the way were a sign that the `mod_gzip` configuration wasn't selected perfectly, because `mod_gzip` could have saved the effort to compress all these files).
- New directive: `mod_gzip_handle_methods`.
- New directive: `mod_gzip_static_suffix`
- When looking for a statically precompressed version of a file `mod_gzip` now will automatically detect whether this version is older than the uncompressed original file.
- When looking for a statically precompressed version of a file `mod_gzip` now will automatically detect an access to a directory - the previous version would have served the content of a file with the name of the directory plus the extension `.gz`, which at least seems to be a questionable idea.
  Now `mod_gzip` will no longer look for a statically precompressed file in case of an access to a directory but always try to dynamically compress the content (if it is entitled to do so).

(Michael Schröpl, 2002-09-30)